Water Plants

Chapter Five: Water Plants on Shalimar

The warm, shallow waters of Shalimar provide a supportive
environment for the diversification of life. The survey team was
overwhelmed by the profusion of unicellular organisms and has
only grouped them tentatively into those with nuclei and those
without nuclei. Our remaining grouping of the life forms is tentatively
based on earth classifications, dividing them into three Kingdoms:
Cleaners (organisms that break things down and clean up organic
debris), Cookers (organisms that make their own food) and Eaters
(organisms that consume other organisms).

Our
present theories about the proliferation of life on Shalimar follow
this model:

Eventually some of the unicellular organisms
divided, but the cells did not separate and go their individual
ways. This led to the development of three Phyla that we have
named Pancakes, Cords, and Slimes. These organisms all have chloroplasts
in their cells. The earliest members of these phyla are collections
of joined cells, not true multicellular organisms: they are often
clones of a single cell, and continue to function as individuals
in spite of being physically joined together. Interdependence
and specialization of function developed eventually, however.

Members of another phylum, Rings, sometimes
have chloroplasts. Members of this phylum will be dealt with in
the following chapter.

Another Phylum, Fuzzes, has no chloroplasts,
and so its members are wholly dependent on the energy capture
achieved by other cells. These are the decomposers. We will include
descriptions of them in this chapter of our report.

Each Phylum has its own page, as there has
been a good deal of diversification.